Did you ever take swim
lessons? This year marks the 34th
anniversary of my swim lessons—and if you had taken them with me, you would be
celebrating that passage of time as well.
It was the summer of 1979, and apparently global warming had not yet been invented. That rainy August, the average high was
around 68 degrees in Ohio. The Red
Cross offered to give free swim lessons to children at our local outdoor swimming pool,
early in the morning before the pool heaters were turned on for the paying customers. I remember hiding underneath my covers as my
mom came to wake me up for swimming lessons.
Jumping into freezing water at 8:00 in the morning (or was it 7:30? My memory gets more severe with each passing
year) was the last thing I wanted to do.
But Mom insisted, despite my tears and vigorous protests. So off we went.
I can still mentally recreate
the clammy feeling of wet cement under my bare feet as we stood in line outside
the pool, glumly watching the deceptively pretty water and thinking of the
shock we would be experiencing very shortly.
It wasn’t hard to imagine how death row inmates felt, as they swallowed
their final meal. The diving boards
frozen in mid-air; the sadly silent concession stand; the pool furniture empty of mothers and babies—it all
looked so punishing and ominous. Our
instructor was a tiny, formidable lady who seemed oblivious to the temperatures. I now applaud her willingness to volunteer
for that torture, but at the time, she seemed more Nazi than Red Cross
volunteer to us as we shivered under the awning. She would bravely jump into the pool and then
beckon with more intimidation than cheer, “Hop in! Heads under!
Today we are going to learn the crawl stroke!” I was used to stepping into water gingerly, getting
used to it one toe at a time. This
business of jumping into a frigid, unheated pool first thing in the morning was
terrifying--but not as terrifying as my little drill instructor. And so I jumped. It was one of the most important things I
ever did—not just because I learned to love swimming, but mostly because I
learned how to make myself do something I
absolutely did not want to do.
Courage is about overcoming yourself. Not all
courageous people have overcome their foes—Joan of Arc went to the stake. Childhood is a boot-camp obstacle course, rigged
with challenges to teach our children how to overcome their number one
hindrance: Self. Teaching our kids to overcome these fears
before age twelve is certainly not the only way to get the job done, but it is
by far the easiest. People have learned how to swim as adults, but
by then they had usually developed deep fears. Parents have the privilege of controlling the
environment when their children are very young. After
age twelve, the whole process is complicated by self-consciousness and peer
pressure.
Dealing with these five
fears before the teen years is a great goal for every parent to have:
1. Fear of new
foods. Self-control often begins at the dinner
table. While it’s not necessary to deliberately
make our food taste terrible (some of us wouldn’t have to try very hard), it is
good for children to discover different textures and tastes. Left to their own choices, most small
children naturally gravitate toward simple sugars—crackers, bread, juice, and
fruity snacks. I will differ with those
who say it is not a battle worth fighting.
This is not about nutrition. This is about making your body do something
it doesn’t want to do. Tasting cooked asparagus
or brussel sprouts, without drama, is a good skill to learn. With due consideration to allergies, food sensitivities, and rare swallowing
disorders, the vast majority of kids need to learn to eat unusual foods without
turning up their noses. We have attended camp and youth activities with young
people who were literally afraid to go away from home because they might not
like the food! They were handicapped by this
irrational fear.
2. Fear of
water. Not all kids are natural-born “fish,” and we
have had to teach our kids how to dunk their heads under water and learn to
swim. Between the ages of 6 – 10, this
becomes a real priority. We do not have an in-ground swimming pool, and
we are not comfortable taking our kids to swimming areas where people are
dressed provocatively. As you can
imagine, it has taken some effort and creativity over the years to find places
to teach our kids how to swim. Yet, helping our children to overcome their fear
of water is a necessity. God created the
human body to float, and with just a little skill and information, we are
designed to be able to save our own lives in the event of a tipped canoe, a ripped life jacket, or an unexpected flood.
3. Fear of
public performance. While most of us will always get quite
nervous to speak publically (even pastors admit to being nervous each time they
stand behind a pulpit), there is a difference between nervousness and panic. One of the nicest things you can do for your
kids is to get them in front of people when they are still very young, before
they have time to develop a real phobia about it. Join that kids’ choir at church! Let them join a team, where they are playing
a sport in front of other people. Let
them sing or say a Bible verse at the nursing home. Sign them up for 4-H, where they have to give
public presentations and talk with judges.
And while you are at it, teach them that failure is a part of life—a reason
to get back up, not a reason to retreat.
4. Fear of new
things and new people. Do your kids ever get to try new things? Do they ever have to make a friend without
your presence to strengthen them?
Risking rejection or failure helps children to overcome the inertia that
paralyzes us from reaching out to others. When our daughter Jessica was ten
years old, we signed her up for Little League softball. She wasn’t really interested in softball at
the time, and as a homeschooler, she was very nervous about meeting a whole new
group of girls. She now says that was a
turning point for her life in teaching her how to talk to new people and try
something she had never done before. She was relieved to discover that making
friends was easier than her fears had told her it would be.
5. Fear of hard
work.
When we have game time at the end of our kids’ class at church, I make everyone
participate. I have observed that whether
we are working with teenagers or small children, there always seems to be a
cluster of young people who want to sit and watch. Sometimes, even adults are afraid of hard
work. They fear the responsibility of
arriving on time and facing the demands of a supervisor. Kids who fear hard work tend to resist
challenges and never really discover what they are capable of. God gave them talents, but they don’t even know
what those talents are. Talents alone,
without hours of hard work, are invisible.
Without exception, the most productive people I know are individuals who
worked hard physically as children. I suspect that hard work early in life does
more for the mind than it even does for the body.
Fear is not of God. It is a part of our fleshly nature that must
be brought into captivity if we will glorify God effectively. May our lives reflect our Savior, Who offers
us the spirit “of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” (II Timothy 1:7)
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